Soren Larsen, bearing the first name of a famous Danish philosopher, has an interesting explanation for why cross-country runners \u2013 at least those at his high school, La Jolla \u2013 finish a race in a pack despite the three-mile distance. They train at the same speed during the week. And they train at the same speed because they want to be around their friends to chat and socialize during the runs. “I like doing an individual sport (cross-country and track) with other people,” says the likeable ninth-grader, a shock of his bright white blond hair standing out from across the Viking workout area. “They push you to do better. They compete against you so that you have to compete against them. I don\u2019t want to do an individual sport without other people.” Part of this dynamic involves running together with teammates \u2013 at least in cross-country, which is a fall sport \u2013 to catch up on the latest news. It\u2019s like mobile social media, without the electronics as a go-between. (Soren Kierkegaard was a 19th-century Danish philosopher and theologian. Larsen recognized his name when it was brought up.) In Coach Paul Byrne\u2019s track program, Larsen is a jumper: long, triple and high. ON a recent afternoon, Byrne and he have been working on the last two steps in the long jump and triple jump. The freshman explains (and demonstrates bodily while the reporter clicks photos) that the last two steps in the long jump have to be executed on the heels, while in the triple jump the opposite is true \u2013 “you can kind of go flatfoot.” Byrne was a stabilizing influence on the school track program last season by providing continuity after a flurry of yearly coaching changes. He jokes when told that Larsen is the subject of an interview: “You\u2019re going to interview a freshman?” Both smile at the comment. Larsen says that his mother Cathy, a marathon runner herself, is the one who pointed out last fall that he and his teammates were finishing cross-country races with similar times. “We\u2019re not all running together during the race,” clarifies the younger Larsen, “but we all finish around the same time.” He insists this isn\u2019t due to faster runners permitting the slower runners to catch up. It\u2019s not a descent into mediocrity. According to him, it\u2019s due to training. “That\u2019s the pace we run during practice. No one wants to run alone, because then they can\u2019t talk to their friends.” His father, Dan, is a kite surfer. He has to explain to an interviewer what kite-surfing is. It\u2019s not windsurfing, which Dan did. It\u2019s not sailboarding. In kite surfing, literally a kite is pulling Dan along as he rides on a board intended for the sport. Kirsten, Soren\u2019s younger sister, is a seventh-grader at Muirlands Middle School and does gymnastics through the La Jolla YMCA. When asked if his father and sister run, as mom and son do, Soren has a look and an assertion: “No.” Mother Cathy has run in the New York City Marathon once and in the San Diego Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon several times. The two have been on runs together, although school schedules inhibit that from happening regularly. Soren Larsen, the new face of the social media generation, is personable and engaged. He\u2019s having too much fun being a healthy, happy 15-year-old to bow his head into his phone.
\nAlthough a people person, he likes the predictability of computer science, taught by Greg Volger. “It\u2019s make more sense than math,” he says. “When I\u2019m doing math, there\u2019s always an exception to the operation I\u2019m doing. In computer science, you can predict. It\u2019s like math, but it makes more sense than math.” He sees himself in “something to do with technology” in 10 to 15 years. He uses his YouTube app a lot and just viewed a video on how the creation of electronic storage and how it has multiplied in recent times. Fair-skinned Larsen still favors food originating from south of the border, including carne asada burritos with rice and beans and tacos made of skirt steak or mahi mahi and guacamole. An avid skateboarder, he says he tried pole vaulting for the first time the day before this interview. “It\u2019s similar to long jump and triple jump as far as the running and last two steps,” he says. “In the triple and long, I go off my right foot. In the pole vault, I go off my left foot. In skateboarding, my left foot is pushing down on the back while my right foot is forward.” He says he had “regrets” over filling in unexpectedly on the second leg of the 4 x 400 relay in a meet the week before and running all out. “I didn\u2019t know I was going to run the 4 x 4,” he relates. “I had a chance to practice just in case, but I did something else. After the race, I didn\u2019t have a lot of oxygen in my brain. Things looked like the red and blue in a 3-D movie.” But he quickly recovered. A track participant since his mother began taking him to the La Jolla High Junior Olympics program when he was an elementary school student, Larsen reflects on the runner\u2019s high. “When I\u2019m running,” he says, “there\u2019s a point where it stops feeling bad and you have deep thoughts. It stops getting worse \u2026 “I forget that I\u2019m running. I just think about things I\u2019m going to do. Sometimes when I\u2019m running, I feel the same way I do before I go to sleep. I\u2019ll think of tricks I can do on my skateboard, like a trick on a mini-pipe (maybe the one at the skatepark in Clairemont).”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Soren Larsen, bearing the first name of a famous Danish philosopher, has an interesting explanation for why cross-country runners \u2013 at least those at his high school, La Jolla \u2013 finish a race in a pack despite the three-mile distance. They train at the same speed during the week. And they train at the same […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":259997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"La Jolla High freshman has cross-country down to a science","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11553],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}